(This column originally appeared in The Hill)
There’s an ongoing labor shortage, which makes it very difficult for small businesses to find and retain talented workers. So won’t President-elect Trump’s imminent deportation of illegal immigrants create a further headache for some of these employers?
Let’s hope so.
Trump has been clear that he’s going after immigrants that are here illegally. Upon taking office, he will not only impose strict border measures but undertake an historic mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants, starting with those who have committed crimes. “If you are in this country illegally in six months, pack your bags, because you’re going home,” soon-to-be Vice President Vance said in September.
Some academics are concerned about the impact that mass deportations will have on businesses. “That gargantuan shock will cost trillions of dollars in economic growth, eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs held by U.S. natives,” George Mason University economics professor Michael Clemens told the New York Times. “It will quickly raise inflation, by reducing the capacity of U.S. firms to supply goods and services faster than it reduces demand.”
I’m not sure what Professor Clemens means when he says “natives” but I’m sure I understand his concern: many businesses that are employing immigrants may suffer a shortage of workers if those workers are deported, and therefore will be challenged to meet demand.
I say, boo-hoo. Because here’s what’s obvious: those workers should never have been employed in the first place. Should we be concerned about those businesses that will suffer a “capacity” reduction because they’re losing workers that they illegally hired? I’m not crying. Neither should you be.
I shouldn’t have to write this, but it is illegal to hire an undocumented worker, and the penalties — both civil and criminal — are steep. Those companies that have been turning a blind eye toward their employees’ legality in the (allegedly) more complacent Biden era had better start addressing their paperwork now.
Businesses had better make sure they’ve completed and retained Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, for each employee who is required to complete the form. Those who continue to employ undocumented workers will face fines of anywhere from $230 to $4,610 per worker, with potential imprisonment if there has been a “pattern and practice” of such behavior.
Don’t think this is serious? Then you may want to ask the owners of a Philadelphia tree service company that paid $95 million in fines in 2017 after pleading guilty “to unlawfully employing aliens, in connection with a scheme in which the highest levels of management remained willfully blind while lower level managers hired and rehired employees they knew to be ineligible to work in the United States.”
Oh, and the media exposure certainly won’t help a businesses’ brand much either.
Even during the Biden administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement was kept busy by companies that violated immigration employment law. In 2020, ICE raided a shipyard in New Orleans and arrested 19 unauthorized immigrants. In April of this year, the agency found about 100 illegal employees — many of them children — at a Tennessee company. ICE found violations at workplaces in Mississippi, Texas, California, Virginia, North Carolina and other states with employers knowingly flouting immigration law.
Will these businesses and others like them be affected by Trump’s immigration crackdown? On behalf of the grand majority of my clients who actually (gasp!) comply with the law, I certainly hope so. Because unfortunately, they are currently being punished for doing the right thing — not by the government but by the market.
Business owners I know in the landscaping, construction and manufacturing industries, where hourly workers are most common and immigrant workers often used, lose business to less scrupulous competitors when they require documentation and pay their workers fair and legal wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Workers I know who have endured the immigration process to get their legal paperwork have lost income and opportunities to illegal workers that have stolen jobs from them.
When you ask business owners across the country, you will find that most, regardless of their political leanings, agree that our immigration system is broken and needs reform. It needs updated legislation that creates a process for all types of immigrants, giving them a path to citizenship. Most also recognize that granting “citizenship” to a specific group of illegal immigrants will exasperate those who didn’t get the same accommodation when they applied. Things will not be fair. Some will be upset.
In the long term, biting the bullet to get things right, even at the expense of some, will be the best way forward for future generations. But it has to start with deportations of those who are here illegally. That will be painful for those people who are only trying to find a better life for themselves and their families, who are here and are not criminals. I have pity for these people.
Also, deporting millions of people who are here illegally will have negative effects on the many businesses who illegally hired them. I have no pity for those people.
